May 4, 2026

Classifying emotions is exhausting

All mental states can be categorized along two dimensions: valency and arousal. Valency is how much we like a feeling. Arousal is the intensity of emotion. In my own mind, I find a particular conscious¹ sensitivity to the valence of feelings. I am always assessing how much I enjoy a particular feeling. This is probably a side effect of excessive introspection.

I find that my goal is to maximize high-valency mental states and minimize everything else. Sometimes the intention is conscious, processed by thoughts. Others time, I find my actions moving towards high-valency mental states without thought. In both cases, I am valence-maximizing.

Acute sensitivity to valency of every mental state is exhausting and misery-inducing. The thinking mind is always occupied classifying feelings and situations as good or bad. Even if we don’t verbalize it with words, there is a feeling that a mental state is wanted or not wanted.

Over the last few months I have made strides to do less of this. To judge situations less, to think less, to plan less, to react less. Generally speaking, I’ve used my intellect less. I’ve started to let go of my attachment to intelligence.

There has been a focus on being in the present, without thinking. The body is first, the mind second. I am much happier and life feels lighter, more fun, more like play. I no longer feel the heaviness of everything.

A strong confounding variable: I did high intensity exercise every morning, which leaves no room for the mind to ruminate. When you exhaust the body, the mind relaxes. Stress is no longer chronic, but acute.

You can frame spiritual seekers (the kind that follow gurus) as people who are desperately escaping any low valency states. They believe there is a cheat code, called “enlightenment,” where you only experience high valency states. They find no material means to get there, so the search becomes spiritual (that which transcends the material). I think these people are more unhappy that they recognize.

This type of enlightenment is not real. Enlightenment is not on the same level of abstraction as valency. It is a different thing entirely. This is hard to internalize.

Why can’t we escape low valency states? Maybe because valency is central to learning. It might be the primitive by which we do or do not do things, for both conscious and subconscious agents. An ant may not have second-order consciousness (aware of being aware) but it may still learn based on a subconscious experience of high and low valency mental states. The same may be said about individual cells.

What about inorganic agents? I was recently listening to Michael Levin’s second appearance on Lex Fridman. Michael thinks mind-ness may be the organizing principle of all things, not matter. Not just things we traditionally see as agents in the world, but everything. Rocks. Sorting algorithms. Weather patterns. The beauty is the mind-ness of a thing is an empirical fact. We can run studies. We simply impose obstacles on a thing with respect to a goal and see if it overcomes that obstacle. If it does, we classify as mind.

Specifics aside, the point is really that we run on intuitions on what things have mind and which don’t. These intuitions are generally unchecked. They are, again, part of the metaphysics we inherit from the hivemind.

We all inherit these metaphysics slightly differently. Yet we can’t talk about it with one another, because we don’t have the right language to describe it. I’d like to develop this language, something of a meta-metaphysics.

— WIP part from joscha twitter about accepting emotion